Mormons & Media: Revisiting 'Mormonism's moment?'

By Scott Taylor , Deseret News

Published: Monday, Feb. 14 2011 12:00 p.m. MST

Last week, Washington Post reporter Sandhya Somasshekhar wrote that the high-profile Mormons in politics and media — think of the names Romney, Reid, Huntsman and Beck — are helping advance the understanding of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The original article, found here, weighed between differing attitudes that the faith had finally "arrived" and that public opinion and mistrust still remained.

Since that time, the Post asked its "On Faith" online contributors — representing a diverse collection of religious thought and practices" — to respond to the question: "If conservative Christians and Mormons share a political agenda, why do suspicions still plague Mormon politicians?"

The responses from Post panelists have been coming in over the days since.

A dozen others weighed in. To quote each would make an already lengthy list even more cumbersome, so here's a look simply at the headlines of their remarks. Perhaps the panelist's name or summary headline might attract your interest and result in a close for closer reading:

And in his "Mormons speak for the faith," Otterson concludes: "Like any major faith, the church will always have its critics, and it's probably that the larger we get the more of those critics there will be. Ultimately, it is the church's own people — all of them, not just the more prominent — who will play a crucial role in increasing understanding among the public as a whole."

Meanwhile, there are plenty of other non-Post media links today.

Along the same lines of election-year attention directed to the LDS Church, Mormon writer Mark Paredes — whose "Jews and Mormons" blog is a regular feature on JewishJournal.com — offers a two-part series "Mormon Q&A for the Upcoming Presidential Election." Part I is here and Part II here.

In its piece titled "I am an ad campaign" found here, GetReligion.org compares the "I am a Mormon" effort with similar religious advertising efforts of the past.

The Northville, Mich. Patch takes a look here at a couple of local young men returning after serving their missions — one in Arizona, the other in Chile. The report provides a lengthy offering from a hometown-newspaper perspective on missionaries, missions and the return home of two friends.

The Albany, N.Y., Times Union reports here on the LDS Church being denied by the city's planning board in its bid to demolish a vacant Catholic middle school and building a new church meetinghouse on the site it recently purchased. Some opponents want to retain historic buildings; other suggest the LDS Church renovate and move into a smaller, vacant Catholic church building across the street.

From the South Pacific and Pacific.Scoop.co.nz comes this posting simply titled "Of missionaries and bicycles," featuring Veronica Irobeni, the first woman from the Solomon Islands to serve a full-time mission

The post comes straight from LDS public affairs in New Zealand but still provides some interesting insights from Irobeni's service, such as her learning to ride a bicycle while in the New Zealand Auckland Mission.